Detailed Interior Features

Cable management is always a key feature in any gaming or enthusiast chassis these days. Every manufacturer seems to have its own solution to the problem. Some of them work out and others don't. The Cooler Master HAF XM, like most enthusiast cases now, has an area behind the motherboard tray for routing cables. There are plenty of grommeted holes through which you can route your cables and plenty of tie-downs to keep them slightly in the back. As I mentioned before, there is over an inch of clearance in back in all. That's plenty of room for all those cables. Unlike many other cases I've seen recently, the Cooler Master HAF XM doesn't provide a junction with fan headers for all the fans the case has room for.

The Cooler Master HAF XM does have an outstanding cable management feature that I immediately fell in love with as well. Just to the right of the PSU area is a small stand, about the size of a PSU itself. It's completely hollow under there, which gives you enough room to fit all of the excess cabling from your PSU. This means that if I have a modular PSU, I can just go ahead and plug in all of the spare cables. That kind of defeats the purpose, sure, but I won't have to go searching around for them if I need them.

Speaking in absolute maximums, the Cooler Master HAF XM case has room for 11 fans; up to four on top, two in the front, two on the side panel, one on the rear of the case, and two mystical optional fans for the HDD. I still haven't quite figured out where those are supposed to go yet.

The 3.5" HDD cage is an interesting concept in the Cooler Master HAF XM. The latching drive bay system is great, and if you use 3.5" hard drives, it's completely tool free. Just unlatch the drive tray and pull it out. After that you can situate your drive in the tray and fit the push-pins into the screw holes on the side of the drive. Slide the tray back into the bay, lock the latch into place, and you are ready to roll. The trays also fit 2.5" drives, but you'll have to screw them into the underside. The screws are included, of course.

As I mentioned before, two of the 3.5" or 2.5" drives can be installed in the hot-swappable bays that takes up the two 3.5" external drive bays. This image shows the backside of the hot-swappable drive bay on the Cooler Master HAF XM. All it takes to power the drive is a molex power connector and SATA cables. If you want to use these drive bay as external bays and get rid of the hot-swappable bays, it's as easy as unscrewing this backplane and removing it.

The space at the top of the Cooler Master HAF XM has room for two 200mm fans or up to four 120mm or 140mm fans. That's a lot of cooling. It also provides plenty of space to install a water cooling radiator up there. In fact, even with the included 200mm fan installed, there is still a lot space for a water cooling system.

I believe the extra 2x120mm fan mounts are on the sides of the 3.5" bays closest to the motherboard. This is similar to the new Corsair Vengeance C70 case design, they blow directly on the video card(s). Look at #5 on their cooling diagram here: